RailMaster 1.62 eLink Connectivity

[96RAF]

Having amended my .ini file to add Check Controller, I thought I would also download and install the latest, latest Rev 0 of RM vers1.62 to make sure it all still worked.

 

Upon opening the Settings screen I found that I can now see the revision states of BOTH my controllers at the bottom, next to the Dev Mgr cog, previously this only showed the eLink.

 

Another back door improvement - thanks HRMS.

[geochoice]

Hi Thanks to those who have made suggestions to get my connection problem sorted, HRMS came back today via email with some suggestions. During the day I tried a few things and the only way to seemingly connect RM to elink was via COM3 but the point setting despite saying setting points did not do so.

Anyway I looked in the grey cog section and no mention of Alternative Comms=1 so I added it. I then  tried to find in Device Manager the Ports section, found it and it showed Port 6 so I pulled the USB and moved it to ther ports and the lowest I could find was COM4 so then changed bit rate ro 112500 as suggested. Back to RM and Settings and located COM and changed it to COM4 and clicked green tick. This kickstarted an elink update to 1:07 ?? After it finished updating I shut RM down and then opened it again and hey presto RM talked to elink then loaded schematic then set points and I am back in business. The ppoints all seem to operate and so tomorrow I hope to address the new pointss recently fitted and test direction etc.

Just for the record this was HRMS reply, which inspired me to delve a bit. Thank you all again, one Happy Bunny Geo.

"To try and resolve this can you edit the RailMaster.ini file by clicking on the small cog icon on the lower left of the About/Help screen. If you cannot see the cog then download and install the latest RailMaster from www.powerpos.com/rail-master/rm_setup.exe.When you have clicked on the cog, acknowledge the warning message and ensure the lines "Check controller=1" and "Alternative comms=1" are present in the file. If they are not just add them to the bottom and save the RailMaster.ini settings, then restart RailMaster.You should also ensure that the BAUD rate for your eLink is set to 115200 in both RailMaster's settings and in the Windows Device Manager under Ports (LPT & Com). You should also try to ensure that Windows has set a Com port below 5 as per the instructions in the RailMaster PDF guide."

[Augustus Caesar]

@geo

That's great to hear and at least you can now play trains!! I was correct in that the port should have been set to 4 or below, as HRMS advise anyway, although it doesn't matter which you use as long as both RM and Device Manager have the same setting.

 

It is mostly COM 3 or 4 that is used anyway by RM and eLink in the majority of users setups and if anyone is using 5 or above and everything is working then lucky them. Sooner or later they will need to move. If I remember to do so I will put a little passage on my site about COM ports and how to use them not just for the eLink but for issues such as was highlighted above.

 

In reference to the exclamation marks in a yellow triangle within Device Manager for bits of hardware... this is relatively easy to sort depending on the hardware and the version Windows. The former is the most problematic in that Windows is usually very good at getting the right driver for that hardware whereas the hardware itself may be obscure to Windows driver databases.

 

Anyway... simply head back to the DM dialogue box or window... right click on the device and then click to update the driver software. Do an automatic search as the first option. Now, this sometimes finds the driver and installs it and sometimes not. Do this for each device and if only ONE works then run the sequence again on the others. Occasionally, depending on the hardware (as I can't know what they are not being at your PC to check :-) ) a second or subsequent run will bring drivers down because the previous change was required to kick start the next one etc.

 

Let me know how you get on and I will tell you how to go to the next stage after that if this doesn't sort all the problems. These exclamation marks are there as warnings to say the hardware isn't working properly or more than likely is not working because the driver installed is incorrect or not installed at all. You don't even need to be fully aware of what this hardware actually is but if want to know there are ways to do it within this panel and more. This is nothing to worry about just now so do what I have suggested and get back to us.

[Augustus Caesar]

@geo

 

Sorry about second posting... the Base System Device on the Device Manager could well be a card reader you have on the system. This reads the memory cards you would normally install in cameras, phones or whatever. Can you post here the make of laptop/PC and its model number and I will see if I can pinpoint exactly what driver is required to clear those for you?

 

The coprocessor is down to a video driver and is normally an nVidia chipset that requires an additional driver to work. Try the methods suggested in my last post and this should do the trick - esp. for the latter driver.

 

RAF suggested deleting the device from Device Manager and while it occasionally works you MUST also delete any driver when it offers this along with the question of 'Do you wnant to remove said device etc. etc.'... not the exact terminology but that doesn't matter.

 

All these unknowns should be sorted within a couple of posts.

[96RAF]

Having looked at why Win 10 was taking so long to reach my Trains Greek market HP machine I stumbled across the fact that some card readers and various NVidia drivers are not supported in Win 10 so that may require some extra effort following through with pc OEM to find a suitable fix.

[Augustus Caesar]

That's an odd one RAF...!

nVidia supply drivers for their own cards and I would find it highly unlikely a card is not compatible with Windows 10 in the slightly longer term. They always have small issues with some older cards but eventually add in routines to make these work with any version of Windows. W10 is not too dissimilar to W7 or 8/8.1 where drivers are concerned (oh OK, maybe the the one that had some of us screeming about not working with the eLink!!!) and these are different beasts altogether.

Card readers are another matter and are a law unto their makers I'm afraid. MS are not in the business of writing drivers but do supply generic ones upon release of the OS each time just so the popular equipment 'works' out of the box. So a constant check to the card manufacturers site is recommended.

The nVidia site will tell you whether or not the graphics/video card is compatible with Windows 10 or will be in future if not immediately. You just need the card model number to check this on their graphics berserk website!